Wordle 649 - Grandslam on Opening Day

 Late with the blog today because I was watching some Opening Day baseball during the mid afternoon time frame when I’ve been writing these entries. My Nationals lost 7-2 to start what is looking like a long rebuilding season. So what’s usually a fun day did not go well. Oh well, hopefully your team has a better season than mine does.

My first guess today was EQUAL. Kind of a strange guess for an opener since it has a Q, but hey, I wanted to get three vowels today for some reason. I get the A in the right spot and a yellow block for the E, so I guess this worked better than my usual A/E guess, but maybe I’m just trying to justify my wild guess.

For my second guess, I decide to put the E next to A, it’s the only place that makes sense to me as I work through words in my head. After some quick thinking, I land on SPEAK and get a green box for the E. Ok, I’m narrowing it down. I start thinking of what two-letter combination goes at the front of the word, I briefly consider CH, but don’t use it. SP pops in my mind, but I literally just used it for SPEAK. So that’s not going to work. I arrive on TR and for some reason I type in TREAD. What a great word, I think. Man, I’m so smart. What a good puzzle. Then I get a grey box followed by four green boxes. Damn, the word isn’t TREAD, it’s BREAD. This is the second day in a row I typed a guess too quickly and was wrong by one letter. Hmmm, maybe I should learn from this and take a moment before entering a guess. That’s a good lesson that I probably won’t learn. I guess we will find out tomorrow. When I try to extend my streak to 54.

Wordle 649 4/6

🟨⬜⬜🟩⬜
⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Wordle No. 648 - I'll start thinking of witty titles for these, I swear

I open the app and wonder what my first guess for today will be. First word that pops into my head is LOOPY. I don't like it because it has a double "O" and using doubles doesn't give you a lot of information in narrowing down what the word is. I'm not in this to get that one in a million first guess win, so I pass. Thinking about odds, leads me to STAKE, I'm about to guess it, but I feel like a lot of my initial words have A&E in those positions, luckily, STEAK is right there and STEAK is also delicious. STEAK it is.

I get yellow blocks for the first three letters. I start thinking where I should go next. PESTS jumps to mind. I recall that the original word list for Wordle excluded plurals, so I don't want to do it. I have no idea if the NYT added plurals when they bought the game. Whether they did or not, I swap out the final S for a Y and submit PESTY. This gets me green boxes for the E and S, but still a yellow box for T.

So I now I have to decide whether T is at the start of the word or at the end. I want to type in DESPOT, but that's too long. Unfortunately, just thinking about it derails me for a bit, and all I can think about are six-letter words. I get back on track with TESLA. Which doesn't help because it's a proper noun (either as the man or the company). Sure, there are Tesla coils, but I don't think that makes Tesla a common noun. I'm stuck and getting nowhere. I decide to throw T at the end and try to fill in the rest around it. I think -ES-T. Man, I want to type resist, but its too long. I take out that second S and I get RESIT. Is that a word? Screw it. I'm guessing it. Worst case, I get the "not a word" notification or whatever it says. RESIT is a word! RESIT is not the word I'm looking for!

But I know T is at the end of the word. I noodle around a bit and type in BESOT. Is that a word? Is anything a word anymore? It feels like an old word. But it also feels made up. But I just pulled RESIT out of nowhere. BESOT it is. Nope. I get four green squares and it's obvious that the correct word is BESET. I briefly wonder if I could have gotten BESET if I hadn't gotten carried away. 

So there was a double letter in the answer, but that's not going to pull me away from my anti-double bias in the early guesses. I'm glad I moved E forward after the first guess. I do wonder if this would have been easier or harder If I got E as the fourth letter. I think I would have gotten to BESET faster, but I don't think I would have gotten a word with E in the fourth slot as quickly as I came up with PESTY as my second guess. It probably would have been a harder wordle in that case. I don't know. Maybe multiverse Adrian can leave a comment and let me know it went for him.

The streak is up to 52.

Wordle 648 5/6

Wordle No. 647 - First Wordle Solving Blog

 I want to start writing again, so I'm going to do a quick write up of my Wordle solving and just throw it out into the wilds of the internet. I like doing Wordle in the morning so I'll try to post my daily thoughts on the day's Wordle before noon, but who knows? I'll try to be funny and insightful, but your mileage may vary. I suppose I'm ripping off various blogs that highlight the process of solving the NYT crossword. I like the crossword and try to solve it each day, but I'm not good enough at it to solve it and write about it. And besides, there is already a market for that kind of thing. Wordle? I don't think there are any blogs about it, but even if there are, the value here is that I'm waaaaaaaaaaay behind the trendiness of Wordle. Anyways, introduction stuff is out of the way, let's get this blogging journey started while I'm in the midst of a 50-day streak....

Ok, so I open today's Wordle and try to figure out what my opening guess will be. First post, so I'll share that my opening strategy involves picking a word with two vowels. Usually, I want something with A and E. Is A&E still a cable channel? I have a feeling that my A&E guesses have not been helpful lately, so I go afield and pick "P-U-R-S-E" as my opener totally on a whim. My random guess is helpful as I get green boxes for U and R.

Hmm. This stumps me. Such an odd placement for these two letters. What could this be? I'm drawing a blank but then I for some reason, "F-U-R-R-Y" pops into my head. I contemplate how kink-positive NYT Wordle editor Tracy Bennett is for a brief moment, and decide I should try a different word. Also, I briefly have a moment of self doubt if "F-U-R-R-Y" is the right way to spell the word. Is it two "R"s? I'm not an animal person, so having a furry cat isn't something that I ever think about. Ok, so I'm just typing random letters around the U-R to see if anything clicks for me. I type in W-U-R-S-T then accidently hit enter. Dammit. I meant to delete the guess, but ended up submitting it as my second guess. That's what I get for screwing around absent-mindedly.

Time to get serious. But "F-U-R-R-Y" is stuck in my mind. I have 99.85% confidence that is the correct spelling. But am I sure? FURY is rage, FURIES are Greek mythology. "F-U-R-R-Y" must be the correct spelling. I type it in Google real quick, just to make sure. I know, this is cheating, but I'm the one who has screwed up my own algorithm and ad choices for the next few weeks by searching for "F-U-R-R-Y". Typing it this many times in this post, isn't helping me either. Alphabet Inc. now thinks what it thinks about me and there isn't anything I can do to change it. I type "F-U-R-R-Y", but don't submit.

I look at "F-U-R-R-Y" and decide there must be some other, similar word I could try. A way to ease myself into "F-U-R-R-Y", if you will. Baby steps. Then it hits me. "H-U-R-R-Y". I type it in. Five green boxes turn over and I feel a sense of triumph.

All in all, a good solving experience. Usually, double letters are stumpers for me, and it's something I only go to late in the process, but I couldn't figure out what else to do other than use the double R. Looking back on it, I lament the missed opportunity since today could've been a correct guess in two tries if I hadn't accidently guessed WURST. Just the worst, really. My streak is up to 51, only five days away from tying Joe DiMaggio, so I won't be too mad about a solve in three. Should I put some kind of rating on this? I dunno. Maybe. I'll think about it.

Wordle 647 3/6